Joyful and Triumphant!

Well, Christmas is over and I thought I would just do a quick update.

Our move was totally insane! We ended up not fitting all of our stuff in the moving truck, so at the last minute Vaughn went and got another small trailer to pull behind his pickup. We stuffed that full, as well as the van (which was getting towed behind the moving truck) and every square nook and cranny in the Tacoma, which I drove with Rebekah and Rachel. Vaughn and I (and Andy and Rachel, too) spent different nights up until the wee hours, packing, painting and cleaning. We are so grateful to neighbors and friends who spent many hours helping us pack the truck, and paint and clean. I was panicking the last hour before our inspection, because we were still trying to empty the house of a few more things, and then sweep and do all the last minute stuff. I just kept praying that we would get it done, and people kept showing up to help! THANK YOU! We are truly blessed with good friends. We finally made it out of town and headed down to Oklahoma. We had one small glitch when we missed the turnpike and had to drive all the way to Salina and then down to Enid. It only added about an hour to our trip. :)

We pulled into Enid around 11:30 and went to weigh everything. I weighed the rig I was driving and then went to our friends' house to pick up some bedding so we didn't have to unpack anything. I grabbed the blankets, got back into the truck and headed down the street. I had to turn the truck around, which wouldn't have been a problem, except I HAD A TRAILER ON IT and I am terrible at backing up a trailer. Plus, it was freezing cold and icy. I acted out the Austin Powers 47 point turn for about 30 minutes. Then I gave up and waited for Vaughn to rescue me. He came and backed up the truck and trailer, and we all drove to our new house. It was only 1 am by this point! We all collapsed (okay, I collapsed, the girls ran around like crazy people for about an hour!) and went to bed. It was quite a feat. Luckily, unpacking only took several hours and we were able to return the truck and trailer by 6 pm that day.

That is the triumphant part of my story! The joyful part is that we got to spend Christmas in our new home! We are mostly unpacked, somewhat organized, and almost recovered from the aches and pains of last week. It is fun to see Christmas decorations that have been in storage since we went to Korea. It was exciting to learn that Santa was able to find us, even though we haven't been in the same place for the last 4 Christmases!

Now, on to more unpacking, organizing and enjoying of the season. At some point I hope to be able to find our camera, and share some pix of our new home. I have no idea when that will be. Hope you all are having a great holiday!